How empires die: theory and practice

[Numerianus]

An interesting article (a chapter from a book).
http://www.inauka.ru/analysis/article70916.html
A panegiric of Roman civilazation. 
Unfortunately, in Russian.
It seems that  quite a lot of Forum members knows Russian and close
languages...

[Cleisthenes]

Numerianus,

Thank you for the suggestion.  I don't speak Russian, but I took the title of the article (ÒÅÎÐÈß È ÏÐÀÊÒÈÊÀ ÃÈÁÅËÈ ÈÌÏÅÐÈÉ) and "googled" it.  There were, of course, many hits.  I clicked on the first few sites and then clicked on "Translate this page."  A few of the sites were book dealers, but the following site <news.tts.lt/index.php?id=1167802419> had a fairly lengthy selection from the book (the page actually had the same photo as your original site).  As anyone knows who has used the automatic translation function of Google, the translation is often clumsy, but the excerpt was interesting none-the-less.  It reminded me of the old axiom, "An empire dies from the inside-out."

Cheers, Jim

[Numerianus]

Thank you! It  is the same excerpt and the Google linguistic tool provides a translation which is sufficient
to get  general ideas.

[wandigeaux (1940 - 2010)]

But the important bit of information announced on this site is the discovery of yet another face on Mars!!  Cheers, George Spradling

[wandigeaux (1940 - 2010)]

Also, I commend the wonderful bit of poetry quoted from Afanasij Fet, one of  the world's most neglected first class poets.  George S